On Thursday, the Unicode Consortium added three characters to its list of 2019 emoji candidates. New characters now being considered for Unicode 12 include a service dog, mixed-race couple, and deaf people.

In announcing the additions, Unicode president Mark Davis explains::

Leading up to July, we’d already decided on the bulk of the candidates for 2019. We had a special focus on accessibility, and were working out how to do a last few accessibility emoji and how to handle mixed-skin-tone groups. In July, we further solidified the draft specification for Emoji 12.0, and added to the candidate list two new accessibility emoji and the 55 mixed-skin-tone couples.